Design research produces insights that can inform different stages of the design process. These insights help designers better understand products, services, and systems before, during, and after conception. When designers research, they do so for three purposes.
Constraints: To learn any limitations the context will impose on a designed outcome placed in it, and to learn potential user’s makeup, which could affect the ways they use the design object.
Evaluation: To learn the effects of the design outcome—especially intended and unintended consequences it caused.
Discovery: To learn people’s needs, values, and preferences, and behaviors, which suggest there’s a need for a product, service, or system to improve people’s experience.
In each of these purposes, designers research so they can create relevant, meaningful design outcomes that facilitate preferred experiences.